some additional information and helpful resource links from Scott Leslie (first posted in his weblog, EdTechPost). Scott is affiliated with the innovative center for educational technology developments in British Columbia, C2T2 (the Centre for Curriculum Transfer and Technology). For even more information/links about Visualization, consult Scott's resource outline on the subject (http://www.island.net/~leslies/blog/outlines/visualization.html).
I started drafting a response to Joe directly in email, but then decided it made more sense to just post it here.
Joe's probably well aware of this movement, but it strikes me that what he is trying to do is similar to what others are trying to accomplish by visualizing Topic Maps, concept maps and other taxonomy visualization projects.
I only follow these peripherally, but my sense is that these things have been evolving for years, and certainly are far more real than when I was first introduced to the techniques and technologies in the early 90's. But what I find exciting is what I perceive as a movement towards the more organic creation of order, and visualizations that are not pre-set drawings into which we can locate resources and knowledge, but instead representations of semantic meaning that are created dynamically on the basis of some replicable and (eventually) recognizable algorithm or pattern and that further improve with use.
In any case, Joe's post prompted me to dig back and find some URLs that might be of interest on the topic. I definitely appreciate his motivation as I too find myself swamped by the sheer mass of information and the immense inter-connectedness of the various knowledge spaces and domains I work and play in, and long for good visualizations of this complex knowledge. - SWL
Topic Maps
The TAO of Topic Maps - http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tao.html
Easy Topic Maps - http://easytopicmaps.com/index.php?page=TopicMapFaq
LiveTopics for Radio - http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/outlines/liveTopics.html
Ten Taxonomy Myths - http://www.montague.com/review/myths.shtml
Taxonomy and other visualizers
Touchgraph Link Browser - http://www.touchgraph.com/browser/LinkBrowser.html
Wordmap (Taxonomy mapping software, a bit expensive) - http://www.wordmap.com/index.html
Antartica Visual Net (hierarchical directory visualization software, also likely expensive) - http://antarctica.net/products.html
Conzilla (Prototype Concept Browser) - http://www.conzilla.org/
WebOnto (neat Java-based taxonomy browser, not sure of availability or release status) - http://eldora.open.ac.uk:3000/webonto
and finally, for a completely different kind of blog mapping:
Blogmapper - http://www.blogmapper.com/ [EdTechPost]
3:33:27 PM 
|
